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GEOGRAPH 2152

Natural Hazards: Hurricane Katrina

Submitted To: Mark Moscicki Submitted By: Jeffrey Smith

Student Number: 250637786

Date Submitted: November 25, 2015

Hurricane Katrina Overview Over 10 years ago, the Untied States of America was hit by one of the deadliest hurricanes it had seen in 77 years. Hurricane Katrina was a tropical cyclone that began its formation on August 23rd and ended on August 31st. Hurricane Katrina is most notably known for its damages done to the city of New Orleans, which struck the city on August 29th, at which time it had been classified as a Category 3 hurricane. The government has since been criticized for its lack of preparation for this high magnitude storm, with a highlight on concrete levees being a failed protective measure. Hurricane Katrina was found to be the direct cause of 1200 deaths and $108 billion dollars in damages, making it the costliest and third deadliest storm between 1851-2010. Refer to Figure 1 and Figure 2 to a list of the costliest and deadliest hurricanes in recent history.

Figure 1. The 10 Costliest Mainland United States Tropical Cyclones (1900-2010)

(Blake et al., 2011)

Figure 2. The 10 Deadliest Mainland United States Tropical Cyclones (1851-2010)

(Blake et al., 2011) Causes A hurricane can be described as version of a tropical cyclone that involves winds greater than 119 km/h in an area with low pressure and can be fit into five categories. Based on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, hurricanes can rank between Category 1, the lowest category, with winds ranging from 119-153 km/h, to Category 5, the highest category, with winds greater than 252 km/h. A hurricane is composed of three parts, which are known as the eye, the eyewall and the spiral rain bands. Hurricanes are known to have slow travelling speed of less than 20km/h. The winds in a hurricane are always moving counter-clockwise which implies that the strongest winds will always be on the east side of the direction the hurricane travels. (Moscicki, 2015). The most damaging effect of a hurricane is the storm surge that is created from it. Storm surges are formed through the mixture of low-pressure storms and strong winds that blend together to raise the sea level surrounding it. Hurricane Katrina had an 8-day lifecycle, where it gained momentum to the point that it was classified as a category five hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico. By the time the hurricane had reach the coastline of the United States, it had slowed to a

Category 3 hurricane. Refer to Figure 3 to see the wind speeds of Hurricane Katrina coming inland. Figure 3. Estimated Peak Gust Wind Speeds: Hurricane Katrina

(Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2014) The storm surge from Hurricane Katrina had the greatest effect on New Orleans because the city lies below sea level. New Orleans had prepared for a Category 3 Hurricane with the implementation of concrete levees to work as barriers but due to infrastructure failure, the levees failed. Impacts In the United States, the sum of direct and indirect lives lost from Hurricane Katrina was 1833 people, spread across Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi (Knabb et al, 2005). It is possible that the death toll was higher than this with the inclusion of possible deaths from missing persons reported after Hurricane Katrina struck. Areas near the coast in the

aforementioned states took varying degrees of damage from the storm. In Florida, there were neighbourhoods specifically in the Miami-Dade county that dealt with flooding damage due to heavy rain, while residents living near the Alabama and Mississippi coast had their homes and businesses completely destroyed by the heavy winds of Hurricane Katrina. The most devastating damage overall was done to the residents in the urban area of New Orleans. Thousands of homes and businesses were demolished as Hurricane Katrina left approximately 80% of New Orleans flooded (The Data Centre, 2015). The affected evacuees were left with next to nothing and as a result many of them chose to move out of state and start over elsewhere. The decrease in residents left New Orleans with a shortened labour supply and a lack of appeal to outsiders to move into New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina had left these five states with serious long-term issues, due to the damage it caused to the tourism industry as well as the gas industry. The damage done to the gas industry also resulted in negative environmental effects. Environmentally, Hurricane Katrina directly impacted the environment through erosion. Many of the coastlines faced erosion from the storm, and the parts of the land that were completely eroded also had an impact on the nearby ecosystem. For example, Hurricane Katrina turned 20-26% of marsh in Breton Sound into open water and also effectively closed 365,000 acres of federal wildlife refuge (Sheikh, 2005). Indirectly, Hurricane Katrina’s powerful winds caused several oil leaks throughout these states, which, in turn, caused environmental damage. Box 1 highlights the major oil leaks resulting from Hurricane Katrina, with the 9 leaks shown accounting for roughly 8.02 million gallons. This did not take into account the less serious oil spills that also occurred from the storm. An oil leak of this magnitude had the potential to harm the wetlands and ecosystems surrounding the leak sites. Figure 4. Oil Spills Resulting From Hurricane Katrina

Response Since the occurrence of Hurricane Katrina, the government has received criticism for their lack of preparation, both proactive and reactive to the threat of a hurricane in New Orleans. Proactively, New Orleans had built concrete levees that were designed to stop a storm surge of a fast moving Category 3 hurricane. New Orleans had also implemented a drainage system throughout the city. This pump system was capable of draining the city of water from a hurricane, given successful levees, in a short period of time, with minimal risk to life and economic loss (Independent Levee Investigation Team, 2006). Due to the high degree of failure of the levees and the failure of the pump system, these proactive measures fell short and it took around 30 days to pump the city dry. On top of this, there had been exercises to prepare for a hurricane, such as the Hurricane Pam exercise. This exercise was to help prepare the government to make an action plan for a hurricane with a storm surge that cause damage to between 500,000-600,000 houses and would lead to the evacuation of over a million residents (Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2012). After going through this extensive exercise to prepare for a disaster more severe than Hurricane Katrina, the government never put this action plan into effect. As a result, they were unprepared for when New Orleans was struck from Hurricane Katrina.

Resiliency Resiliency refers to the speed at which the individuals in a society and the economic property affected by an event can recover (Moscicki, 2015). After Hurricane Katrina, parts of the city were striving to come together to help the city recover to its prior state. Though there were some communities working together to clean up New Orleans, there were still many more evacuees who cut ties with the city and did not return. As (The Guardian, 2015) stated, the population of New Orleans had fallen to roughly 79% of what it used to be prior to Hurricane Katrina, mostly due to the loss of the elderly in need of social services and families with children looking for schools for their children. A big help regarding the immediate recovery of the city was through relief agencies. Agencies like Red Cross supported New Orleans residents with their daily essentials while an agency like Habitat for Humanity helped with the reconstruction of houses. A big issue that occurred after Hurricane Katrina was regarding the homelessness in New Orleans. In January 2007 there were 11,619 homeless individuals in New Orleans and through programs and agencies, the number of homeless people had dropped to 4,903 (UNITY of Greater New Orleans, 2012).

Ways to Improve Hurricanes prove to be a challenge for habitable areas because they can occur at any time and cannot be prevented. It is important that the government and its citizens in hurricane-prone areas are prepared for a high-category hurricane at any time. New Orleans showed intention to improve the city’s safety from storms by rebuilding the levees with stronger materials and up-todate building codes, making the buildings more flood and wind resistant as well as making a new evacuation plan for its residents. (Kates et al, 2006).

References Blake, E.S., C.W. Landsea, and E.J Gibney (2011) The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Tropical Cyclones From 1851 to 2010 (And Other Frequently Requested Hurricane Facts. Federal Emergency Management Agency (2012) Hurricane Pam Exercise Concludes. http://www.fema.gov/news-release/2004/07/23/hurricane-pam-exercise-concludes. Accessed Nov. 24, 2015 Federal Emergency Management Agency (2014) HAZMUS-MH Application: Hurricane Wind: Estimated Peak Gust Wind Speeds: Hurricane Katrina. https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/12790. Accessed Nov. 21, 2015. Independent Levee Investigation Team (2006) Chapter 11: Summary of Engineering Lessons. http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/projects/neworleans/report/CH_11.pdf. Accessed Nov. 21, 2015 Kates, R.W., C.E. Colten, S. Laska, and S.P. Leatherman (2006) Reconstruction of New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina: A Research Perspective. Vol. 103 no. 40, 14653-14660 Knabb, R.D., J.R. Rhome, and D.P. Brown (2011) Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Katrina. http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL122005_Katrina.pdf. Accessed Nov. 23, 2015 Moscicki, M. (2015) Lecture 2: Disaster and Risk Research, GEOG 2152 Geography of Hazards, University of Western Ontario. September 23, 2015. Moscicki, M. (2015) Lecture 5: Severe Weather, GEOG 2152 Geography of Hazards, University of Western Ontario. October 14, 2015. Sheikh, P.A (2005) The Impact of Hurricane Katrina on Biological Resources. https://web.archive.org/web/20080624185025/assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL33117_2005101 8.pdf. Accessed Nov. 23, 2015 The Data Centre (2015) Facts for Features: Katrina Impact. http://www.datacenterresearch.org/data-resources/katrina/facts-for-impact/. Accessed Nov. 22, 2015. The Guardian (2015) ‘New Orleans West’: Houston is home for many evacuees 10 years after Katrina. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/25/new-orleans-west-houstonhurricane-katrina. Accessed Nov. 23, 2015 UNITY of Greater New Orleans (2012) Homelessness in Greater New Orleans: A report on Progress toward Ending Homelessness. http://unitygno.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/UNITY-2012-Point-In-Time-HomelessCount-Report.pdf. Accessed Nov. 21, 2015...